Note of the Maitre d'Hotel for collations for the guests8,226 francsIlluminations1,080 francsGratifications to the beaters1,000 francsEau de Cologne for the ladies30 francsGun-bearers148 francsHelpers (150)600 francsAids (200)315 francs
An Imperial Hunt at FontainebleauAn Imperial Hunt at Fontainebleau
Another hunt was given in 1811, in honour of Napoleon, when such items as three thousand francs for an orchestra, a like sum for bouquets for the ladies, a thousand or two for bonbons and fans, and twelve thousand for hired furniture, etc., to say nothing of the expenses of the hunt itself, made the bag somewhat costly. It was not always easy for the master of the hunt to get justice when it came to paying for his supplies, and in these same records a mention of a dozen leather breeches at a hundred and forty francs each was crossed off and a marginal note,Non, added in the hand of Maréchal Berthier, Prince de Wagram, himself.
The chief figure in the French hunting world of to-day is another descendant of the Napoleonic portrait gallery, Prince Murat. At the age of twelve the young Prince Joachim had already followed the hounds at Fontainebleau and Compiègne. In his double quality of relative and companion of the Prince Imperial he was one of the chiefs of the equipment of the Imperial Hunt. To-day, though well past the span of life, he is as active and as enduring in his participation in the strenuous sport as many a younger man and his knowledge of the grand art ofvénerie, and his ardour for being always ahead with the hounds, is noted by all who mayhappen to see him while jaunting through the Fôret de Compiègne, keeping well up with the traditions of his worthy elder, the "Premier Cavalier" of the First Empire, the King of Naples.
He won his first stripes in the hunting field at Compiègne in 1868, at a hunt given in honour of the Prince de Hohenzollern and the Princesse, who was the sister of the King of Portugal. It was a most moving event, so much so that it just escaped being turned into a drama, for one of the ladies of the court had a leg broken, and the minister, Fould, was almost mortally injured. A "dix cors," a stag with antlers of ten branches, had been run down at the Rond Royal where it had taken refuge in a near-by copse, and after an hour's hard chase was finally cornered in the courtyard of some farm buildings of the Hameau d'Orillets. A troop of cows was entering the courtyard at the same moment, and a most confused melée ensued. The Inspector of Forests saved the situation and the cows of the farmer, and the stag fell to the carabine of Prince de la Moskowa, with the young Prince Murat on his pony in the very front rank.
Thus early initiated in the chivalrous sport of the hunt the young man followed every hunt, big or little, which was held in the environs of Paris for many years, and by the time that hecame to possess the epaulettes of an Officier de Cuirassiers he was known to all the hunts from the Ardennes to Anjou.
For the past generation he has been retired to civil life by a Republican decree, and since that time has lived in his suburban Paris property, devoting himself to the raising of hunters. Here he lives almost on the borders of that great extent of forest which occupies the northern section of the Ile de France, occasionally organizing a hunt, which takes on not a little of the noble aspect of a former time, the prince following always within sound of the hunting horn and the baying of the hounds, if not actually always within sight of the quarry.
It is here, in his Villa Normande, near which Saint Ouen gave Dagobert that famous counsel which has gone down in history, that the Prince and Princesse Murat come to pass two or three months each year with their children, their allied parents and the "great guns" of the old régime who still gather about the master of the hunt as courtiers gather around their king.
At Chamblay there have been held magnificent gun shoots under the organization of the prince and his equipage. His kennels contain forty-eight of the finest bred hounds in France, and are guarded by three caretakers, the goader,Carl, whose fame has reached every hunting court of Europe and a couple ofvalets des chiens. The prince's colours are distributed as follows: a huzzar jacket of blue, with collar, plaquettes, and vest of grenadine and breeches of a darker blue.
Formerly Prince Murat hunted the roe-deer in the valley of the Oise, but many enclosures of private property having made this exceedingly difficult in later years he is to-day obliged to go farther afield. In the spring the equipage goes to Rosny, near Mantes, and perhaps during the same season occasionally to Rambouillet.
The hunts at Chamblay are the perfection of the practice of the art. Seldom is the quarry wanting. The refrain of the Ode to Saint Hubert lauds the prowess of this great "Maitre d'Equipage."
"Par Saint Hubert mon patronC'est quelque due de haut renom* * * *Sonnez: écuyers et piqueuxUn Murat vien en ces lieux."
Chamblay fortunately being neither populous nor near a great town there is no throng of curious spectators hovering about to get in the way and scare the game and the hounds and their followers out of their wits. The Chasse deChamblay is the devotion of thevrais veneurs; the Prince Murat and his son, the Prince Joachim, (to-day at the military school at Saint Cyr), the Prince Eugene Murat, the Comte de Vallon, the Baron de Neuflize and a few famousveneursin gay uniforms come from afar to give éclat to the hunt of the master. And the ladies: the following names are of those devoted to the prowess of the Prince Murat—Madame la Princesse, la Princesse Marguerite Murat, Mademoiselle d'Elchingen, the Duchesse and the Marquise d'Albufera, the Duchesse de Camestra, and Madame Kraft.
Rendezvous de Chasse, RambouilletRendezvous de Chasse, Rambouillet
From this one sees that romance is not all smouldering. If other proof were wanting a perusal of that most complete and interesting account of the hunt in France in modern times, "Les Chasses de Rambouillet" (Ouvrage offert par Monsieur Felix Faure) would soon establish it. This was not a work destined for the public at large. The hunt was ever a sport of kings in France, and though France has become Republican itsChasse Nationaleat Rambouillet partakes not a little of the aspect of those courtly days when there was less up-to-dateness and more sentiment.
There were but one hundred copies of this work printed for the friends of the late presidentof the Republic—"Other Sovereigns," as the dedication reads, "Princes, Grand Dukes, Ambassadors."
Rambouillet was the theatre of the most splendid hunts of the sixteenth century, and down through the ages it has ever held a preëminent place; holds it to-day even. Louis XVI in the Revolutionary torment even regretted the cutting off of his prerogative of the royal hunt, but he had no choice in the matter. In his journal of 1789 one reads: "the cerf runs alone in the Parc en Bas" (Rambouillet), and again in 1790: "Séance of the National Assembly at noon; Audience of a deputation in the afternoon. The deer plentiful at Gambayseuil."
The Revolution felled many French institutions; low, great, ecclesiastical and monarchial monuments, the trees of the forest, and the royal game, by a system of poaching, had become greatly diminished in quantity.
The nineteenth century, so frankly democratic in its latter years, was less favourable to the hunt than the monarchial days which had gone before. It had a considerable prominence under Charles X, more perhaps than it ever had under Napoleon, who in his infancy and laborious adolescence had few opportunities of following it; and in the later years of his life he was too busy.
Napoleon III was not really a "good hunter," though he was something of a marksman and took a considerable pride in his skill in that accomplishment.
Entering the democratic era, Jules Grévy seems to have been only a pot-hunter of thebourgeoisie, who practiced the art only because he wanted a jugged hare for his dinner, or again simply to kill time.
Sadi-Carnot was still less a hunter of the romantic school, but assisted frequently at the ceremonial shootings which were arranged for visiting monarchs. On one occasion he was put down on the record-sheet of a hunt at Rambouillet as responsible only for the death of eighteen heads, whilst a visiting Grand Duke pulled down a hundred and fifty.
It was notably during the presidency of Felix Faure that Rambouillet again took on its animation of former times. The chateau had been furbished up once more after a long sleep, and, to the great satisfaction of the inhabitants of the town, there were more comings and goings than there had been for a quarter of a century.
In the summer and autumn the president made Rambouillet his preferred residence, and there received many visiting sovereigns and notables of all ranks. In one year a scoreof "Official Hunts" were held, to which all the members of the diplomatic corps were invited, while there were two or three affairs of an "International" character in honour of visiting sovereigns.
All was under the control of the Grand Veneur of the Third Republic, the Comte de Girardin, and while a truly royal flavour may have been lacking the general aspect was much the same as it might have been in the days of the monarchy. The Captain of the Hunt under Felix Faure was the Inspector of Forests, Leddet, and the Premier Veneur was the Commandant Lagarenne.
The president himself was a marksman of the first rank, and never was there a reckoning up of thetableaubut that he was near the head of the list. So accomplished was he with the rifle that on more than one occasion he was obliged to practically efface himself in favour of some visiting monarch, as it was said he did in the case of the King of Portugal in 1895, the Grand Ducs Vladimir and Nicolas in 1896.
Huntsmen not royal by virtue of title, or alliance, the Republican president beat to a stand-still. He had no pity nor favour for a mere ambassador, whether he hailed from England or Germany, nor for members of the Institute, Senators nor Deputies. With Prince Albert ofMonaco he held himself equal, and for every bird shot on the wing by the head of the house of Grimaldi the "longshoreman" of Havre brought down another.
La chasse à courrebefore the law in France to-day may be practiced only under strictly laid down conditions. The huntsman must legally have his dogs under such control, and keep sufficiently close to them, as to be able to recover the quarry immediately after it has been closed in upon by the hounds.
Like shooting, since the Decrée of 1844, hunting with hounds may only be undertaken under authority of apermis de chasse, and in open season, during the daytime, and with the consent of the owners over whose properties the hunt is to be held.
The ceremony of the hunt in France now follows the traditions of the classic hunt of the monarchy. Theveneurdecides on the rendezvous, whether the quarry be stag or chevreuil, fox or hare. Thepiqueurfollows close up with the dogs, sets them on or calls them off, and recalls them if they go off on a false scent.
Not every one assumes the Paris Palais de Justice to ever have been the home of kings and queens. It has not, however, always been a tilting ground for lawyers and criminals, though, no doubt, when one comes to think of it, it is in that rôle that it has acted its most thrilling episodes.
The Saint Chapelle, the Conciergerie and the great clock of the Tour de l'Horloge mark the Palais de Justice down in the books of most folk as one of the chief Paris "sights," but it was as a royal residence that it first came into prominence.
This palace, not the conglomerate half-secular, half-religious pile of to-day, but an edifice of some considerable importance, existed from the earliest days of the Frankish invasion, and when occupied by Clotilde, the wife of Clovis, was known as the Palais de la Cité.
Under the last of the kings of the First Race this palace took on really splendid proportions.When Hugues Capet arrived on the throne he abandoned the kingly residence formerly occupied by the Frankish rulers, the Palais des Thermes, and installed his goods and chattels in this Palais de la Cité, which his son Robert had rebuilt under the direction of Enguerrand de Marigny.
Up to the time of Francis I it remained the preferred residence of the French monarchs, regardless of the grander, more luxuriously disposed Louvre, which had come into being.
Philippe Auguste, by a contrary caprice, would transact no kingly business elsewhere, and it was within the walls of this palace that he married Denmark's daughter. His successors, Saint Louis, Philippe-le-Hardi, and Philippe-le-Bel did their part in enlarging and beautifying the structure, and Saint Louis laid the foundations of that peerless Gothic gem—La Saint Chapelle.
From the windows of the Palais de la Cité another Charles assisted at an official massacre, differing little from that of Saint Bartholemew's, which was conducted from the Louvre.
On the first floor of the Palais de Justice of to-day is the apartment paved in a mosaic of black and white marble, with a painted and gilded wooden vaulting, where Charles V received the Emperor Charles IV and the "Roi des Romains." The three monarchs, accompanied by their families, here supped together around a great round marble table, a secret supper prolific of anentente cordialewhich must have been the forerunner of recent ceremonies of a similar nature in France.
Known as the Salle de Marbre, this great chamber came later to be the Tribunal where the courts sat. It was only after the death of Charles VI, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, that the Palais de la Cité was given over wholly to the disciples of Saint Yves, the judges, advocates and notaries. It became also the definite seat of the Parliament and took the nomenclature of Palais de Justice, though still inhabited at intermittent intervals by French royalties. One such notable occasion was that when Henry V of England was here married to Catherine de France, and when Henry VI of England took up his temporary residence here as king to the French.
In the fourteenth century the precincts of the Palais de la Cité—the open courtyard one assumes is meant—were invaded by the stalls of small shopkeepers, some of which actually took root in wood and stone and became fixtures to such an extent that the courtyard was known as the Galerie des Merciers.
The great marble chamber after becoming the meeting place of the Tribunal played a part at times dignified and at others banal. An incident is recorded where the clerks and minor court officials danced on the famous marble table and "played farces" with the judicial bench serving as a stage. It was said that, on account of the immoralities which they represented, the authorities were obliged to suppress the performances by law, as they have in recent years the flagrant freedom of the "Quat'z Arts."
Up to the times of Francis I but few events of importance unrolled themselves within the Palais de la Cité, but in 1618 a violent conflagration broke out leaving only the round towers of the Conciergerie, the tower and the church, and that part of the main structure which housed the great Salle de Marbre, unharmed. Apropos of this, a joyous rhymester of the time made the following quatrain:
"Certes ce fut un triste jeuQuand a Paris Dame JusticePour avoir mangé trop d'épiceSe mit le Palais tout en feu."
Jacques Debrosse was charged with rebuilding the edifice after the fire and refitted first the Grand Salle, to-day the famous Salle des PasPerdus, crowded with the shuffling coming and going crowd of men and women whose business, or no business at all, brings them to this central point for the dissemination of legal gossip. It is a magnificent apartment, and, to no great extent, differs from what it was before the conflagration.
This Salle consists of two parallel naves separated by a range of arcades and lighted by two great circular openings with four round-headed windows at either end. Its attributes are practically the same as they were in 1622. The structure, take it as a whole, may be said to date only from the seventeenth century, but certain it is that the old Palais de la Cité is incorporated therein, every stone of it, and if its career was humdrum that was the fault of circumstances rather than from any inherent faults of its own.
The Conciergerie, that inelegant, inconsistent architectural mixture of the ancient and modern, considered apart, though it properly enough is usually considered with the Palais de Justice, was formerly the dwelling or guardhouse of the Concierge of the Palais de la Cité. His post was not merely that of the keeper of the gates; he was a personage at court and was as autocratic as his more plebeian contemporaries of to-day, for the Paris concierge, as we, who have for years livedunder their despotism well know, is a very dreadful person.
In addition to being the governor of the royal dwelling this concierge was the guardian of the royal prisoners. In 1348 he was further invested with the official title of Bailli and the post was, at times, occupied by the highest and the most noble in the land, among others Philippe de Savoie, the friend of Charles VI, and Juvenal des Oursins, the historian of this prince. The first to combine the two functions, that of Bailli and Concierge, was Jacques Coictier, the doctor of Louis XI.
As a virtual prison the Conciergerie only came to be transformed when Charles V quitted the residence of the Palais de la Cité, and the Conciergerie, as such, only figures on the Tournelles registers under date of 1391.
The fire of the latter part of the eighteenth century destroyed a large part of the building, but enough remained to patch together the most serviceable of Revolutionary prisons, for at one time it held at least twelve hundred poor souls, of whom two hundred and eighty-eight were killed off at one fell blow.
But one woman among them all actually came to her death within the prison walls. This was La Belle Bouquetière of the Palais Royal who,in an access of jealous furor, horribly mutilated a royal guardsman, and for this met a most cruel death by being transfixed to a post and submitting to a trial of "le fer et le feu." In just what manner the punishment was applied one can best imagine for himself.
The Revolutionary rôle of the Conciergerie is a thing apart from the purport of this book, hence is not further referred to.
Going back to the time of Francis I, among the famous prisoners of state were Louis de Berquin, the Comte de Mongomere, the regicides Ravaillac and Damiens, the Maréchal d'Ancre, Cartouche, Mandrin and others. To-day, as a prison, the Conciergerie still performs its functions acceptably, safeguarding those up for the assizes, and those condemned to death before being sent on their long journey.
The three great flanking towers of the Conciergerie are its chief architectural distinction to-day. That of the left, the largest, is the Tour d'Argent, that of the middle, the Tour Bonchet, and the third, the Tour de César or the Tour de l'Horloge. This last is the only one which has preserved its mediæval crenulated battlements aloft. The great clock has been commonly considered the largest timepiece of its kind extant, but it is doubtful if this now holds goodwith railways and insurance companies vying with each other to furnish the hour so legibly that he who runs may read.
Across the Pont au Change, from the Palais de la Cité, by the Louvre and out into the Faubourg Saint Antoine, one comes to the Place des Vosges, the old Place Royale, which occupies almost the same area as was covered by the courtyard of the Palais des Tournelles, so called from its many towers.
All around the Palais des Tournelles was located a series of splendidhotels privésof the nobility. In one of these, the Hotel de Saint Pol, the king once lodged twenty-two visiting princes of the quality of Dauphin (the eldest son of a ruling monarch), their suites and domestics.
Charles V in his time amalgamated with his royal palace three of these magnificent private dwellings, the Hotel du Petit Musc, the Hotel de l'Abbé de Saint Maur and the Hotel du Comte d'Étampes.
The palace proper really faced on what is now the Rue Saint Antoine, opposite the Hotel Saint Pol. Its historic and romantic memories of the sword and cloak period of gallantry were many, but the edifice was demolished by the order of Catherine de Médici.
In the palace Charles VI was confined, during the period of his insanity, by order of the cruel Isabeau de Bavière. The Duke of Bedford, when regent for the minor Henry VI, lodged here, and upon the expulsion of the English it became the residence of Charles VII. Louis XI and Louis XII each inhabited it, and the latter died within its walls.
The Palais des Tournelles will go down to history chiefly because of that celebrated jousting bout held in its courtyard on the marriage day of the two princesses, Elizabeth and Marguerite.
Henri II and the elder princes, his sons, were to ride forth in tournament and break lances, if possible, with all comers. The court, including Catherine de Médici and the princess Elizabeth, wife of Philippe II, the late husband of Mary Tudor, the two Marguerites and other high personages were seated on a dais upholstered in damascened silk and ornamented with many-coloured streamers.
The time was July and the morning. At a signal from Catherine music burst forth and the bouts began.
The king rode forth at the head of his chevaliers, wearing a suit of golden armour, his sword handle set with jewels, and, in spite of the presence of his wife, his lance flying blackand white streamers, the colours of Diane de Poitiers, who had lately turned her affections from father unto son.
A herald proclaimed the opening of the combat, and before night the king had broken the lances of the Ducs de Ferrare, de Guise, and de Nemours, and was just about disarming when a masked knight approached from the Faubourg Saint Antoine and challenged the king, who, in spite of being implored to desist by his queen, entered the lists again and was ultimately wounded unto death by the sable knight.
Henri II expired the same night in a bedchamber of the Palais des Tournelles, whither he had been carried, at the age of forty-one, the victim of chance, or the wile of the Sieur de Montgomeri, the ancestor of England's present Earl of Eglinton. The captain of the Scotch Guards, Montgomeri, was not immediately pursued (he meantime had fled the court), but Catherine de Médici harboured for him a most bitter rancour. Pro and con ran his cause, for he had his partisans, but the Maréchal de Matignon finally caught up with him in Normandy and he was tortured and condemned to death for the crime oflèse majesté—beating the king at his own game.
The widowed queen angrily ordered Dianede Poitiers from the court, and caused the Palais des Tournelles to be razed. This was her only means of showing her contempt for the woman who had played her royal spouse to his death as the Romans played the gladiators of old; and Tournelles, as a palatial monument of its time, blotted out the rest when it disappeared from view.
A forest of spirelets soared aloft from the gables and rooftrees of the Palais des Tournelles. There was no spectacle of the time more imposing than this sky-line silhouette of a Paris palace; not at Chambord nor Chenonceaux was the spectacle more fine. It was like a fairy castle, albeit that it was in the heart of a great city.
To the right of the Palais des Tournelles, beyond the Porte Saint Antoine, was the ink-black, frowning donjon of the Bastille, its severity in strong contrast with the more luxurious palaces of the princes which surrounded it not far away.
The charming Place des Vosges, which occupies the site of Tournelles to-day, is another of Paris's breathing spaces. Well may it be called a royal garden—a park virtually on a diminutive scale—since it was originally known as the Place Royale, under Henri IV.
With the advent of the gascon Henri de Béarn this delightful little unspoiled corner of old Paristook on the aspect which it now has. Within this enclosure were the usual garden or park attributes, more or less artificially disposed, but making an ideal open-air playground for the court, shut in from outside surroundings by the outlines of the old palace walls, and not too far away from the royal palace of the Louvre.
The first and greatest historic souvenir of this garden was a Carrousel given in 1612, by Marie de Médici, two years after the tragic death of Henri IV, celebrating the alliance between France and Spain. Under Richelieu the square became known as the Place des Vosges, and, in spite of the law against duelling, which had by this time come into force, it became a celebrated meeting place for duellists like Ivry, the "Grand' Roué" or the "Vel' Hiver" of to-day.
It was on May 12, 1627, that the Comte des Chappell killed Bussy d'Amboise on this spot, and left a bloody souvenir, which was only forgotten by the historians when they had to recount another meeting, this time between the Catholic Duc de Guise and the Protestant Coligny d'Andelot.
"Monsieur," said the duke, "we will now proceed to settle that little account between our illustrious houses," and with that he drewhis sword and killed Coligny, as if he were but stamping the life out of a caterpillar.
Now, with all this bloody memory behind, the Place became one of the most elegant residential quarters of the capital, preferred above all by the nobility, the Rohans, the Alègres and Rotroux.
At No. 21 lived Victor Hugo, just before the Coup d'État, in the house first made famous as the habitation of the somewhat infamous Marion Delorme.
Among other illustrious names who have given a brilliance to these alleyed walks and corridors are to be recalled Corneille, Condé, Saint Vincent de Paul, Molière, Turenne, Madame de Longueville, De Thou, Cinq-Mars, Richelieu, D'Ormesson, the Prince de Talmon, the Marquis de Tessé and the Comte de Chabanne.
It is possible that this charming Paris square will remain as ever it has been, for a recent attempt of the owner of one of the houses which borders upon it to change the disposition of the façade brought about a law-suit which compelled him to respect the procedure which obtained in 1605 when it was ordained the Place Royale.
To prove their rights the civic authorities had recourse to the original plans still preserved inthe national archives. This is a demonstration of how carefully European nations preserve the written records of their pasts.
BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF OLD PARISBIRD'S EYE VIEW OF OLD PARISView larger image
The decision finally arrived at by the courts—that the Place des Vosges must be kept intact as originally planned—gave joy to the hearts of all true Parisians and archeologists alike.
A stroll by the banks of the Seine will review much of the history of the capital, as much of it as was bound up with Notre Dame, the Louvre and the Palais de la Cité (now the Palais de Justice), and that was a great deal, even in mediæval and Renaissance times.
The life of the Louvre was Paris; the life of Paris that of the nation; and the life of the nation that of the people. This even the Parisians of to-day will tell you. It is scant acknowledgment of the provinces to be sure, but what would you? The French capital is much more the capital of France than London is of England, or Washington of America—leaving politics out of the question.
Paris before the conquest by the Franks was practically only the Seine-surrounded isle known as Lutetia, and later as "La Cité," and the slight overflow which crept up the slopes of the Montagne de la Sainte Genevieve. From the Chatelet to the Louvre was a damp, murkyswamp called, even in the moyen-age, Les Champeaux, meaning the Little Fields, but swampy ones, as inferred by studying the evolution of the name still further.
A rapid rivulet descended from Menilmontant and mingled with the Seine somewhere near the Garden of the Tuileries.
Clovis and his Franks attacked the city opposite the isle, and, upon the actual achievement of their conquest, threw up an entrenched camp on the approved Roman plan in what is now the courtyard of the old Louvre, and filled the moat with the waters of this rivulet. The ensemble was, according to certain authorities, baptized the Louvre, or Lower, meaning a fortified camp. This entrenchment was made necessary in order that the Franks might sustain themselves against the Gallo-Roman occupants of Lutetia, and in time enabled them to acquire the whole surrounding region for their own dominion. This the Lower, or Louvre, made possible, and it is well deserved that its name should be thus perpetuated, though actually the origin of the name is in debate, as will be seen by a further explanation which follows.
Little by little this half-barbaric camp—in contradistinction to the more solid works of the Romans—became aplacefort, then a château,then a palace and, finally, as the young lady tourist said, an art museum. Well, at any rate, it was a dignified evolution.
Two Louvres disappeared before the crystallization of the present rather irregularly cut gem. From the Merovingians dates the Louvre des Champs, the hostile, militant Louvre, with its high wood and stone tower, familiar only in old engravings. After this the moyen-age Louvre, attributable to Saint Louis and Charles V, with its great tower, its thick walls of stone and its deep-dug moats, came into being. With Francis I came a more sympathetic, a more subtle era of architectural display, a softening of outlines and an interpolation of flowering gables. It was thus that was born that noble monument known as the New Louvre, which combined all the arts and graces of a fastidious ambition.
Nothing remains of the old Louverie (to which the name had become corrupted) which Philippe Auguste early in the thirteenth century caused to be turned into an ambitious quadrangular castle from a somewhat more humble establishment which had evolved itself on the site of the Frankish camp, save the white marble outline sunken in the pavement of the courtyard of the palace of to-day. By destiny this palace, set down in the very heart of Paris, wasto dominate everything round about. From the date of its birth, and since that time, it has had no rivals among Paris or suburban palaces. Its very situation compelled the playing of an auspicious part, and the Seine flowing swiftly by its ramparts added no small charm to the fêtes and ceremonies of both the Louvre and the Tuileries.
Never was a great river so allied with the life of a royal capital; never a stream so in harmony with other civic beauties as is the Seine with Paris. When Henri II entered Paris after his Sacrament he contemplated a water-festival on the Seine, which was to extend from the walls of the Louvre to the towers of Notre Dame, a festival with such elaborate decorations as had never been known in the French capital.
The kings of France after their Sacrament entered the Louvre by the quay-side entrance, followed by their cortège of gayly caparisoned cavaliers and gilded coaches with personages of all ranks in doublet and robe, cape and doublet. The scintillating of gold lace and burnished coats gave a brilliance which rivalled that of the sun.
No sooner had the cavalcade entered the gates of the Louvre than it came out again to participate in the day and night festival, which had thebosom of the Seine for its stage and its bridges and banks for the act drop and the wings.
The receptions of Ambassadors, the baptisms of royalties, royal marriages and celebrations of victories, or treaties, were all fêted in the same manner.
Napoleon glorified the Peace of Amiens under similar conditions, and there is scarce a chronicler of any reign but that recounts the part played by the Seine in the ceremonies of the court of the New and Old Louvre.
It was amid a setting which lent itself so readily to all this that the Old Louvre, which was rebuilt by Francis I, first came to its glory.
The origin of the name Louvre has still other interpretation from that previously given. It seems to be a question of grave doubt among the savants, but because the note is an interesting one it is here reproduced. The name may have been derived as well from the wordœuvre, from the Latinopus; it may have been evolved fromlupara, orlouverie(place of wolves), which seems improbable. It may have had its evolution from either one of these origins, or it may not.
Anglo-Saxons may be proud of the fact that certain French savants have acknowledged that the name of the most celebrated of all Parispalaces is a derivation from a word belonging to their tongue and meaning habitation. This, then, is another version and one may choose that which is most to his liking, or may go back and show his preference forlower, meaning a fortified place.
A palace—something more elaborate than a mere habitation—stood on the same site in the twelfth century, a work which, under the energies of Philippe Auguste, in 1204 began to grow to still more splendid proportions, though infinitesimal one may well conclude as compared with the mass which all Paris knows to-day under the inclusive appellation of "The Louvre."
The Paris of Philippe Auguste was already a city of a hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants, with mean houses on every side and little pretense at even primitive comforts or conveniences. This far-seeing monarch laid hand first on the great citadel tower of the fortifiedlower, added to its flanking walls and built a circling rampart around the capital itself. It is recounted that the rumbling carts, sinking deep in mud and plowing through foot-deep dust beneath the palace windows, annoyed the monarch so much that he instituted what must have been the first city paving work on record, and commanded that all the chief thoroughfarespassing near the Louvre should be paved with cobbles. This was real municipal improvement. He was a Solon among his kind for, since that day, it has been asine qua nonthat for the well-keeping of city streets they must be paved, and, though cobblestones have since gone out of fashion, it was this monarch who first showed us how to do it.
The Louvre of Philippe Auguste was the most imposing edifice of the Paris of its time. To no little extent was this imposing outline due to its great central tower, themaitresse, which was surrounded by twenty-threedames d'honneur, without counting numberlesstourelles. This hydra-towered giant palace was the real guardian of the Paris of mediævalism, as its successor is indeed the real centre of the Paris of to-day.
The city was but an immense mass of low-lying gable-roofed houses, whose crowning apex was the sky-line of the Louvre, with that of Tournelles only less prominent to the north, and that of La Cité hard by on the island where the Palais de Justice and Notre Dame now stand.
Before the hand of Francis fell upon the Louvre it was but an isolated stronghold—a combined castle, prison and palace, gloomy, foreboding and surrounded by moats and ramparts almost impassable. Philippe Auguste built well andmade of it an admirable and imposing castle and a place of defence, and a defence it was, and not much more.
For its time it was of great proportions and of an ideal situation from a strategic point of view; far more so than the isolated Palais de la Cité in the middle of the Seine.
Four gates led out from the inner courtyard of the Old Louvre: one to the Seine; one to the south, facing Saint Germain l'Auxerrois; another towards the site of the later Tuileries; and the other to about where the Rue Marengo cuts the Rue de Rivoli of to-day.
With the endorsement given it by Philippe Auguste the Louvre now became the official residence of the kings of the Capetian race, whereas previously they had dwelt but intermittently at Paris, chiefly in the Palais de la Cité.
The monarch, as if to test the efficiency of his new residence as a stronghold, made a dungeon tower, his greatest constructive achievement until he built the castle of Gisors, and in the tower imprisoned the Comte de Flandre, whom he had taken prisoner at Bouvines. Louis IX (Saint Louis), in his turn, built a spacious annex to Philippe Auguste's Louvre, to which he attached his name.
Charles V totally changed the aspect of thepalace from what it had formerly been—half-fortress, half-residence—and made of it a veritable palace in truth as well as in name, by the addition of numerous dependencies.
Within a tower which was built during the reign of this monarch, called the Tour de la Librairie, he assembled his royal bibelots and founded what was afterwards known as the Bibliothèque du Louvre, the egg from which was hatched the present magnificently endowedBibliothèque Nationalein the Rue Richelieu.
It is related that in 1373 the valet-de-chambre of Charles V made a catalogue of the nine hundred and ten volumes which formed this collection, an immense number for the time when it is known that his predecessor, Jean-le-Bon, possessed but seven volumes of history and four devotional books as his entire literary treasure.
This seems to be a bibliographical note of interest which has hitherto been overlooked. Charles V was evidently a man of taste, or he would not have built so well, though all is hearsay, as not a fragment remains of the work upon which he spent his talents and energies.
From the death of Charles V, in 1364, until 1557 the Louvre by some caprice ceased to be a permanent royal residence. At the latterepoch the ambitious, art-loving Francis I conceived the idea that here was a wealth of scaffolding upon which to graft some of his Renaissance luxuries and, by a process of "restoration" (perhaps an unfortunate word for him to have employed, since it meant the razing of the fine tower built by Charles V), added somewhat to the splendours thereof, though in a fickle moment, as was his wont, allowed a gap of a dozen years to intervene between the outlining of his project and the terrifically earnest work which finally resulted in the magnificent structure accredited to him, though indeed it meant the demolition of the original edifice.
It was at this period that Charles V entered into the ambitious part which Francis was to henceforth play in the Louvre, so perhaps the interruption was pardonable.
One can attribute the demise of the Old Louvre to the coming of Charles V to Paris in 1539. This royal residence, hastily put in order to receive his august presence, seemed so coldly inconvenient and inhospitable to his host, Francis I, that that monarch decided forthwith upon its complete reconstruction and enlargement. Owing to various combinations of circumstances the actual work of reconstruction was put off until 1546, thus the New Louvre as properly belongs to the reign of Henri II as to that of his father.
Francis I, more than any other European monarch of his time, or, indeed, before or since, left his mark as an architect of supreme tastes over every edifice with which he came into personal contact. His mania was for building—when it was not for affairs of the heart—and so daring was he that when he could not get an old fabric to remodel he would brave all, as did Louis XIV at Versailles, and erect a dreampalace in the midst of a desert. This he did at Chambord in the Sologne. At Paris his difficulties were perhaps no less, but he had his materials and his workmen ready at hand.
Francis's repairs and embellishments to the Old Louvre were by no means perfunctory, but he saw possibilities greater than he was able to perform with the means at hand. He first razed the central tower, ordonjon, and scarce before the departure of his royal guest, was already dreaming of replacing the entire fabric with another which should bear the same name. One has read of the monarch's thoughts when he was awaiting the coming to Paris of his old enemy in the peninsula; how he regretted the moment when he should sally out to meet him and leave his new-found friend, the Duchesse d'Étampes, in spite of her pleadings for him to remain by her. All this is mere historic incident, and has little to do with Francis's art instincts and ambitions. He probably thought this very thing himself when he replied to the importunate lady: "Duchesse, I must tear myself away without more ado; I go to meet my brother monarch at Amboise on the Loire."
It was Francis I, the passionate lover of art, who collected the first pictures which formed the foundation of the present collections of theMusée National du Louvre. He bought many in foreign parts, and many others were brought from Italy by Italian artists, whom he had commanded to the capital: Primaticcio brought with him, upon his arrival, more than a hundred antique statues. These art objects were first assembled at Fontainebleau and ornamented the apartments of the king. Among them were Da Vinci's "La Joconde" and Raphael's "Holy Family and Saint Michael."
Henri II, Henri IV, and Louis XIII did little to enrich the art collections of the palace, but Louis XIV charged his minister, Colbert, with numerous purchases. In 1661 he bought the fine collection left by Cardinal Mazarin, and ten years later purchased the contents of the celebrated gallery belonging to the banker Jacob of Cologne. The state expended for these acquisitions nearly six hundred thousandlivres, and received for this sum six hundred paintings and six thousand drawings.
It was at this period that the royal collections were transferred to Paris, a little before the death of Colbert, when they were placed in the galleries of the Louvre; though it was a hundred years later that a national museum was actually created. This was virtually brought about from the fact that the royal collections were transported in a great part to Versailles, only to be returned to Paris in 1750, transferred again to Versailles, and ultimately to be returned to Paris under the sheltering wing of the grand old Louvre.
The Museum of the Louvre, the Museum National et Central des Arts, is the outgrowth of a Decree of the Convention, dated July 27, 1793. It was aided and enriched considerably under Napoleon I, that passionate lover of the beautiful, who, none too scrupulously, would even seek to "make a campaign" in order to acquire art works for the museum of his capital.
Many of these abducted art treasures (like the horses of Saint Marc, for instance) were afterwards returned to their original owners, but the nucleus of this unrivaled art museum was chiefly due to the consul and emperor.
As soon as Charles V had left the Louvre demolition was at once begun by Francis, and in 1541 an Italian, Serlio, was bidden prepare a set of plans for the Renaissance glory that was to be. Serlio, refusing, or debating the price, was cast aside for the Frenchman, Lescot, whose plan was adopted.
The work can in no way be said to have suffered by the change of plans, for though PierreLescot was as yet a name unknown in the world of architecture his talents were sufficiently great, magistrate and parliamentary counsellor though he was, to give to Paris what has ever been accounted its chief Renaissance glory.
Work was begun at once, a work which was not interrupted by intrigues of court, of love, of war, nor by the deaths of Francis I nor his successor, Henri II.
Although the work was begun in an energetic manner it was 1555 before the western wing was ready for the hand of the sculptors, but from this time on, judging from the interpolated monograms of Charles IX and Henri IV on the south wing, work progressed less hurriedly. The two other constructions, which were to enclose the quadrangle to the north and east, were completed under such circumstances that there has never been a question as to their period.
For fifteen years the work went on, when suddenly it was abandoned as were the plans of Lescot. A sole wing, that following the Seine and abutting at right angles against the Pavilion de l'Horloge, had resulted.
The sculptures of its south façade, as well as certain of its interior decorations, were entrusted to Jean Goujon (1520-1572), who became a victim of the horrible night of Saint Bartholomew, planned in the same Louvre by the wily Médici.